The education secretary, Michael Gove, said today that his plan to transform England's schools was urgently needed to improve the chances of the poorest children, and claimed the country was falling behind the rest of the world in science, literacy and maths.

He defended himself from criticism that a bill to enable all the country's schools to convert to academies was being rushed through parliament by telling MPs that the legislation would bring "new dynamism" to a programme that had lifted standards for all children and helped the disadvantaged most of all. As hundreds of parents and teachers gathered outside parliament to protest against the coalition's cuts to the school buildings programme, Labour accused him of a schools revolution that would focus on children who were already better off. In the Commons, the education secretary compared the number of children on free school meals who went to Oxbridge in 2006 ‑ 45 ‑ with a single private school in London which had an average of 82 admissions a year. "We need to legislate now to ensure that opportunity becomes more equal in our society," he said.

Addressing concerns that his reforms will create an elite among state schools, Gove said the academies will be required to help struggling schools. "We will ensure that every school that acquires academy freedoms takes an underperforming school under its wing in order to ensure that all schools improve as a result." He described himself as a "born-again Blairite" and said he was building on plans by former prime minister Tony Blair to give academy freedoms to every school. Under Labour, the academies programme focused on weak or underperforming schools, giving just over 200 of these better resources and greater freedom. Under Gove's plans, schools rated outstanding by Ofsted will be fast-tracked to academy status, a move critics fear will create a two-tier system.

Figures published last week showed that just over 1,900 schools had expressed an interest in converting to academy status. These included 1,038 schools rated outstanding. The list revealed a bias towards the south-east, with 99 Kent schools expressing an interest, 70 in Hertfordshire, 69 in Essex and 59 in Surrey.

To allow schools to convert by the start of the new term, the government has compressed the committee stage in which bills are usually studied in detail by a panel of MPs. Instead, this stage will take place in two days on the floor of the Commons with the aim of pushing it through before parliament rises next week. The shadow education secretary, Ed Balls, said the bill was being "railroaded" through to avoid proper scrutiny. He said: "The rushed and flawed provisions in this bill will make things much worse for our schools and our children in the coming months."

Balls sought to drive a wedge between the coalition partners, highlighting the fact that the Liberal Democrat education association, which represents rank and file members, is urging Lib Dem MPs to vote against the bill. The association fears the benefits of the new academies will be focused narrowly on already successful schools in the home counties. It is also concerned that a system where some schools are in council control and others answer to Whitehall risks creating surplus school places, which they regard as wasteful in an age of austerity. The education secretary was backed by senior Lib Dems in the Commons yesterday.

Gove's bill restores freedoms removed from academies under Gordon Brown, including the right to abandon the national curriculum ‑ though a new curriculum must be "balanced and broadly based".

The legislation was amended when it went through the Lords, with a clause added requiring governing bodies to consult parents, teachers and the local community before opting out of council control. Academies have also been opened to scrutiny under freedom of information laws.

The potential benefits of academy status were greeted with scepticism by the head of one of the outstanding schools that would be fast-tracked on application. Nigel Burgoyne, head of Kesgrave high school, an 1,800-pupil secondary in Suffolk, said there was a belief that academies would win more favourable financial settlements from government.

Burgoyne, whose school has expressed an interest in applying, said: "By default, everyone else is slightly worse off. We have a moral concern that this is not the best thing for the whole system."